Re: Proposal for write(1) addition

Hi,
> I think it is better to fix tmux to add utmpx entries. Traditionally things
> like xterm or others could choose to create utmp entries or not, so that
> people who did not want to be bothered with write talk, biff, and friends,
> could specify that they did not want a utmp entry. Consider the scenario
> where I want to have a clean terminal that it is not interrupted by such
> junk, and another that is.
according to somebody from the #tmux-channel in freenode, tmux does not set
utmp entries because they would need additional permissions for that.
Not having an utmp entry usually only considers being currently online on
that machine or not - and in turn leading to nobody being able to write you
messages while you're offline. Imho also a great drawback of the current
write.
Additionally, I think this behaviour of write is even less intrusive than the
old one - now the output is targeted at the login terminal, which is usually
the one you start tmux/screen from, thus being sent to exactly the terminal
you are currently working on.
This behaviour should even overwrite the mesg n of a 'child' terminal when
just writing to the father.
With the patch, only the newest active terminal is used. Of course that can
also lead to the mother terminal being written to, but I consider the first
case more probable.
Not having a utmp-entry is imho the wrong way of staying private - and in
most cases it's not even possible. That's exactly what mesg is for. If you
want to stay private, just take away permissions, that's the only way to go.
Regards, Julian